


halloween treats

by lockiesaurus



Category: Good Omens, Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Gen, anathema and the them getting some of the love and attention they deserve, baking!!, halloween fic but in august, how the them and anathema celebrate the first halloween after armageddidn't, newt is like, there but not really, to shake things up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 01:57:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lockiesaurus/pseuds/lockiesaurus
Summary: The Them stop by to visit Anathema and Newt before trick-or-treating.





	halloween treats

**Author's Note:**

> i toyed around with the prompt a little, adding the them and doing baking instead of cooking but hopefully this works too!!

Halloween has come to Tadfield.

It came dressed in jack-o-lanterns and fake cobwebs with plastic spiders on them and ghosts fashioned years ago from sheets that had fallen out of use, strewn across front steps and lawns. It came in the shrill laughter of children in the streets as they bounced from one house to the next, buckets and pillowcases clutched in tiny hands.

Tadfield was small but made up for it with enthusiasm of its inhabitants, especially that of the younger kind. The Them were particularly thrilled. They were, after all, the only ones aware of an important new addition to their Halloween celebrations.

This year around, Tadfield had a real witch.

(“An occultist,” Adam had corrected them earlier. “It’s very different and ain’t got nothin’ to do with your eyes, either.”)

Anathema hadn’t needed a whole lot of convincing to participate in the jovillities. Truth of the matter was, by the time the Them had all made their way to Jasmine Cottage, she was out front, balancing a tall stool with Newt precariously stood on top.

“A little to the right,” Anathema was caught saying, squinting a critical eye.

Newt obeyed and manipulated a string of lights in the shape of tiny pumpkins and bats he was trying to attach to the roof. “This any better?”

“They look cool!” Brian exclaimed, already leaning half-way out of the gate and into the garden.

His outburst almost sent Newt toppling off his perch. Anathema didn’t seem to notice. She had caught his leg, but from where Adam stood, he doubted a grip like that would matter much if Newt was determined to fall. 

Instead, she turned to face them. “Ah, hello,” she said in that tone of voice Adam had grown used to. Like she knew they would come all along, way before any of them knew themselves. “Don’t you look spooky.”

Ever since they had banded together, the Them had taken time to plan weeks if not months ahead to get their costumes in order and matching. Their goal was to look frightening or, better yet, horrifying but all their mothers appeared to collectively agree they must prevent any such thing from happening at all cost. Spooky was often, as it was now, the best they could hope for, and they understood that much. So, they’d smile, because spooky meant they were only a step away from scary.

They had decided to theme themselves around magic this year. To honour their summer alongside the witch friend they had made. Also, they had bits and pieces from their Spanish Inquisition game and that made it easier on their mums, who had to make their costumes, too.

Adam read an article once that detailed the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer (there was a great one, apparently, though he still couldn’t say exactly what it was) and he’d decided to become a dark sorcerer, corrupted by his own greed for powerful magic.

Brian was dressed as a wizard, despite Adam trying to explain the difference and which one would be cooler. Wensleydale had chosen to go as a necromancer, a new word he’d learned recently and insisted it was a cooler kind of magic than even a sorcerer with a dark, mysterious past. He did have to explain further but found it easiest to have a paper skull duct-taped to the breast pocket of his shirt.

Pepper, who had grown fond of Anathema since they had met, had decided to dress as an occultist. Adam did want to tell her occultists weren’t all that scary and used Anathema, who was nice for an adult, as an example, but Pepper had insisted.

Together, with their trailing open cloaks (apart from Pepper, who would step on the hems of the boys’ cloaks sometimes to prove how stupid they were) and in Brian’s case a magical staff (a stick he’d found while playing in the woods that he painted over in black) and Wensleydale’s witch-styled hat (left over from their summertime game), they did look like quite the group.

Not a scary-looking group, perhaps, but an impressive one.

Anathema wouldn’t lie to them, though, and if at least one person thought they looked spooky, all the better. She ushered them past the gate and admired their costumes. Newt, in the background, did something of the same, beaming and waving at them as he tidied up the stool back inside. He went back out and started toying around other decorations.

“I was about to start making treats for later,” Anathema said, going back inside her cottage and gesturing for the children to follow. “You could help if you’d like.”

Used to seeing the kitchen rather tidy, an undeniable change had come over its interior. Mainly it would be that it looked as if someone had already cooked five different meals in a rush before any of them took a step inside. There was a notebook with scattered papers around it on the island, a baffling combination of recipes scrawled on top.

Pepper migrated to a few cookie cutters, a set themed around Halloween that came in various shapes of cat heads, gravestones, spiders and ghosts tucked away in one of the kitchen’s corners. They were buried, one under the other, in an impressive pile of oranges and purples.

“What will we be making?” asked Adam. Confirming in that for all of them that there were few things they’d like more than to play around with different sweet treats before going out later to collect more.

“I’ve got piles of recipes from all around the Internet,” Anathema said with a hint of pride, waving to the table. She must have grown used to treating research a particular way. Adam saw it before on TV shows, the kind his parents would watch in the evenings, with a lot of chases and detective work. Anathema did a similar thing, missing maybe only red thread to connect similar recipes together.

Brian found an open packet of flour and scooped some into the palm of his hand, then blew a cloud of the powder into the air. “Hey, check it out! Like magic!”

Cartoon characters would normally glow or sparkle or something like that when conjuring magic and Adam hadn’t considered it much before. When he did his magic, he’d only floated. An opportunity lost. And something Brian gave him the chance to amend. “Your magic is nothing compared to mine!” Hands dipped in some flour, he clapped them together, eliciting a cough from himself and Wensleydale, who stood nearby.

From behind the flour cloud, Adam was grinning.

The Them, with a new game and a mess to make, stripped of some of the more bothersome accessories and continued to sprinkle each other with puffs of flour or try to get a little sugar down each other’s collars.

Anathema had herded them, somewhat, to focus at the task on hand, with limited success. She had lended a hand, too, in developing the mess. “Witches should have sharp nails,” she growled while plucking raspberries unto the tips of her fingers, wiggling them about.

“Like this?” Pepper copied her and done her best shrill, witch-like laughter.

Affronted, Anathema clutched her chest, open-palmed hand hovering near her heart to avoid smearing the fruits still on her hand, “I don’t sound like that!”

“Witches do, they have to, it’s how they laugh in the films,” Wensleydale pointed out, chewing on one of the raspberries off his fingers.

“Ew, that’s your nail,” said Brian with a scowl.

“No, it’s not! That’d be gross,” Wensleydale protested. He sounded confident and looked ready to throw the raspberry up.

Anathema ate her raspberries too. “Witches can be gross, it can’t be helped,” she admitted with a heavy sigh, a smirk on the edge of her lips, “but it’ll be a lot easier to keep cooking without them, so it might be for the better. We haven’t decorated the cookies yet.”

They had been in the kitchen for a little over an hour and were productive for a little over half of that time, enough to make some cookies out of a dough that was prepared earlier and that Brian had hunted from the depths of the fridge.

Knowing it would be getting dark soon, they set back to work. Any time wasted not collecting candy after the sun began to set was just running the risk of not getting everywhere before curfew. Despite their best efforts, they had only managed to make some cookies and buttercream. They sat, hunched over the cookie pieces, frosting them with an amount urgency only equal to the care they put into the designs.

Another twenty or so minutes later, buttercream smudged around their fingers and sleeves (Pepper got some of the purple cream on her cheek, but ignored it long enough to have forgotten about it), they concluded they were done.

All the cookies took up the kitchen’s island, flashes of bright dyes and creative uses of sprinkles, a variety that in another world may have felt messy but to them was perfect.

“Thank you for your help. I should have some cupcakes done later-” Anathema had started to collect the cookies, to set them aside, only to find the four conspiratorially stood in front of her, Pepper a step ahead of the others, hands clasped behind her back.

“You should close your eyes,” Brian suggested.

“Surprises work out best that way,” Adam confirmed.

Anathema did as they asked and found a single cookie left in her hand. It was that of a witch head, with a witch’s hat and all, carefully frosted into her likeness with all the artistic skill of four 12-year-olds.

“When did you do that?” she managed to giggle and smile, broader than she had all evening, though she couldn’t bring herself to look back up at them from the cookie. She held it like it was the most precious thing she owned, which to her it might as well have been in the moment.

“It was Pepper’s idea. We all tried to distract you a little, to give us time,” Wensleydale explained like he was the mastermind behind it.

“Oh… that’s why Brian spilled the sprinkles everywhere, wasn’t it-”

“Well not rea-” Pepper had begun, cut off quickly by Brian.

Brian only nodded gravely. “Of course it was. I thought it worked very well, for a distraction and all, since… it sounded like a good distraction.”

Anathema continued to smile. She made it easy to know she recognised the lie and easy to feel there wouldn’t be any repercussions. For neither the lie as much as the spilled sprinkles that were long since collectively tidied up.

“This was very nice of you.”

“There’s actually something. You could, um, do it, as a thank you,” said Pepper, glancing to the other boys for support while she slipped away to gather whatever props she’d brought with her.

Outside, the sun was starting to dip in the horizon, their sign they all must hurry. Wensleydale and Brian followed her, fitting their hats back on and finding their staff wherever it had rolled off to in the commotion around the kitchen in the past hour or so.

Adam continued for them, already dressed and ready to leave, planted near the door, “Could we come back soon? We thought we’d leave some of our candy with you, so our parents don’t take it away. They don’t like it if we bring too much back home.”

He was joined by the others, four pairs of wide, hopeful eyes turned to her. Anathema glanced between them and the cookie she was still holding unto. She nodded. They were out of her door, yelling ‘goodbye’s and ‘see you later’s within a blink of the eye and she waved at them with the same excitable energy.

“Everything’s set up the way it should be! What have you got there?” Newt returned, a little grimy from working outside in the grass and bushes, beaming only because Anathema seemed happy.

Anathema held the cookie up next to her face. “What do you think?”


End file.
